morning at the track

For M & me, the track is kind of "our thing." Since we've been together, we've gone to every opening day rain or shine. Except this year, because he was away on tour during opening day. So we were SUPER psyched when our friend Kelly said she wanted to experience a day at the track with us. She was warned that it was going to start super early. We picked her up at 8:30am, and got to the gates by 9:30. The gates didn't open until 10:30, so we had a solid hour of waiting, but we were second in line. Why is it so important to get there early? Because if you're spending the day at the picnic tables like we do, you need to get in and claim your spot before all the tables are snatched up. And they are, usually within a matter of minutes!

M snagged us a table under some trees, and we marked our territory with the gaudiest table cloth we could find at the dollar store.

Kelly shot this photo of M, returning to our table with the day's programs so that we could start the task of choosing our horses.

M studied the stats, while I decided to just pick names I liked. Kelly's strategy was to pick horses with the names she thought were stupidest.

Kelly and her breakfast bevy, firefly peach iced tea.

view from our table

Breakfast of champions! None of us had time for a proper breakfast, so we ended up snacking on M's dollar store Mike and Ikes to hold us over until lunch.